Conquistador Coffee Campaign
Conquistador Coffee Campaign is a sketch that appears in "How Not to Be Seen," the twenty-fourth episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Synopsis The sketch opens with the camera zooming out to reveal the boss of an advertising firm (John Cleese) at his desk reading aloud from a book called "Chinese For Advertising Men". Suddenly, there is a knock at the door and a man (Eric Idle) enters from the window and sits down at the other side of the desk. The boss looks at him incredulously for a few beats, before addressing him by his name "Frog". The man corrects him that his name is "S. Frog" but the boss quickly shuts him up (which becomes a running gag every time the boss mentions Frog's name). The boss reveals that he has spoken had the managing director of Conquistador Coffee (whom Frog was creating an ad campaign for) and was so unhappy with the campaign that he shot himself. Frog sheepishly asks if the man shot himself badly, to which the boss replies, "No, extremely well!" The boss reaches to the left of his desk and lifts up a man's leg, revealing the deceased man. He then smiles to the camera and holds up a sign that says 'joke' before returning to the conversation. He then reveals that before the managing director offed himself, he left a note with the company secretary (whose dead body he then pulls out of a closet and grabs the note) which stated how displeased he was with Frog's campaign and asked why Frog had decided to change the branding of "Conquistador Instant Coffee" to "Conquistador Instant Leprosy". Frog answers that it was a joke, to which the boss angrily points the 'Joke' sign at him. Frog then reverses himself and reveals through another sign that it was not a joke but "a sales campaign". The boss then calls Frog's attention to Conquistador's sales chart. He shows that Conquistador was the brand leader in the commercial Coffee market when Frog started working with them. The sales chart takes a sharp downturn when Frog's first campaign "Conquistador Coffee brings a whole new meaning to the word 'vomit'." was introduced. The chart falls off even steeper with Frog's offer of 'a free dead dog with every jar'. The chart then plummets through the X-axis with Frog's second campaign "The tingling fresh coffee which brings you exciting new cholera, mange, dropsy, the clap, hard pad athlete's head. From the House of Conquistador." Frog tries to justify it as a soft-sell, but the boss presses him even further to explain himself. He then sheepishly replies that at least he was able to promote the name "Conquistador". The boss explains that he was so 'effective' in doing this that customers have burned the factory down and that the factory owner is hiding in the boss' bathroom. A shot then rings out offscreen and the boss corrects himself that the owner 'was' hiding in his bathroom (to which he holds the 'joke' sign up to the camera). Frog wonders allowed if he will be fired. The boss, now in a rage, asks Frog how he could possibly justify staying with the company now that three men are dead, the factory is burned down and the Conquistador account is lost (which has bankrupted the firm). Frog then holds up the joke sign and says, "sorry father," which seems to pacify the boss. The two men go to the window where the boss reveals in a calm voice that frog's film has won a prize. The camera zooms out through the window to reveal a pastoral landscape leading into the next sketch. Trivia * The original version of this sketch includes a line by John Cleese just after Idle's line about a 'soft-sell': "finally these tactless references to leprosy and terminal cancer". This line was cut from the final edit of the episode due to the BBC's ban on references to cancer at the time. Category:How Not to Be Seen sketches Category:Sketches